Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great | Page 6

him well. But many of his pieces have been carried from Rome, and as they were not signed and scores of imitations sprang up, it can not always be determined now what is his work and what not. He toiled alone, and allowed no 'prentice hand to use the chisel, and unlike the sculptors of our day, did not work from a clay model, but fell upon the block direct. "I caught sight of Michelangelo at work, but could not approach for the shower of chips," writes a visitor at Rome in the year Fifteen Hundred One.
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Perfect peace is what Michelangelo expected to find in the palace of the Pope. Later he came to know that life is unrest, and its passage at best a zigzag course, that only straightens to a direct line when viewed across the years. If a man does better work than his fellows he must pay the penalty. Personality is an offense.
In Rome there was a small army of painters and sculptors, each eager and anxious for the sole favor of the powers. They quibbled, quarreled, bribed, cajoled, and even fair women used their influence with cardinals and bishops in favor of this artist or that.
Michelangelo was never a favorite in society; simpering beauty peeked at him from behind feather fans and made jokes concerning his appearance. Yet Walter Pater thought he found evidence that at this time Michelangelo was beloved by a woman, and that the artist reproduced her face and form, and indirectly pictured her in poems. In feature she was as plain as he; but her mind matched his, and was of a cast too high and excellent to allow him to swerve from his high ideals. Yet the love ended unhappily, and in some mysterious way gave a tinge of melancholy and a secret spring of sorrow to the whole long life of the artist.
Jealous competitors made their influence felt. Michelangelo found his work relegated to corners and his supplies cut short.
At this time an invitation came from Florence for him to come and make use of a gigantic block of marble that had lain there at the city gate, blackening in the dirt, for a century.
The Florence that had banished him, now begged him to come back.
"Those who once leave Florence always sigh to return," says Dante. He returned, and at once began work on the "David." The result was the heroic statue that stood for three hundred years at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, only a hundred feet from where Savonarola was hanged and burned. The "David" is now in the Belle d' Arte, and if the custodian will allow you to climb up on a ladder you will see that the top of the head shows the rough unfinished slab, just as it was taken from the quarry. Any one but a master would have finished the work.
This magnificent statue took nearly two years to complete. As a study of growing youth, boldly recognizing all that is awkward and immature, it has never ceased to cause wordy warfare to reign in the camp of the critics. "The feet, hands and head are all too large," the Athenians say. But linger around the "old swimmin'-hole" any summer day, and you will see tough, bony, muscular boys that might have served as a model for the "David."
The heads of statues made by the Greeks are small in proportion to the body. The "Gladiator" wears a Number Six hat, and the "Discobolus" one size smaller; yet the figures represent men weighing one hundred eighty pounds each. The Greeks aimed to satisfy the eye, and as the man is usually seen clothed, they reduced the size of the head when they showed the nude figure.
But Michelangelo was true to Nature, and the severest criticism ever brought against him is that he is absolutely loyal to truth. He was the first man ever to paint or model the slim, slender form of a child that has left its round baby shape behind and is shooting up like a lily-stalk. A nude, hardy boy six years old reveals ankle-bones, kneecap, sharp hips, ribs, collar-bone and shoulder-blade with startling fidelity. And why, being Nature's work, it is any less lovely than a condition of soft, cushioned adipose, we must let the critics tell, but Michelangelo thought it wasn't.
From Fourteen Hundred Ninety-six, when Michelangelo first arrived in Rome, to Fifteen Hundred Four, he worked at nothing but sculpture. But now a change came over his restless spirit, for an invitation had come from the Gonfaloniere of Florence to decorate one of the rooms of the Town Hall, in competition with Leonardo da Vinci--the only Leonardo.
He painted that strong composition showing Florentine soldiers bathing in the Arno. The scene depicts the surprise